Imagine a belief system where strenuous exercise and fasting are like prayer, the gym is a house of worship, and a fully stocked kitchen is the path to eternal damnation.

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Devout followers depend on each other to encourage prayer and to help each other turn away from sin.

In this hypothetical theology, there is only one cardinal sin: eating.

A phenomenon called “thinspiration” is the basis for countless pro-anorexia, or pro-ana, websites that offer tips on how to successfully contract the eating disorder.

These sites promote anorexia by encouraging fasting, intense workouts, and solutions to suppress appetite.

Anorexics are essentially being offered a loaded gun.

The advice that pro-ana websites help to aim the barrel at eating disorder sufferers’ brainwashed heads.

One blog called “Dying to be Thin” offers advice to those who ask for anorexia tips and documents the life of the anorexic blogger, identified only as “Ana Regzig.”

“I haven’t weighed myself yet but I’m … exploding out of my old clothes and I hate it,” Regzig said in a Jan. 4 entry following a birthday party that turned out to be her intervention.

But this blog is just one among many pro-ana sites.

Proanatrick.com offers speedy weight loss tips and appetite suppressants.

All this lies under a banner that reads, “Why be ugly forever?”

The website’s Oct. 14, 2008, article titled “Pro-Ana Tips and Tricks” recommends that wearing a rubber band around your wrist, instructing readers to “snap it everytime you think of eating something.”

The list of tips even suggests “(pinching) your fat” or “(punching) yourself in the stomach.”

Pro-ana websites make it seem like self-inflicted pain is the key to success.

It is like telling people to stab themselves with a No. 2 pencil to study for a test.

The list goes on for 25 sickening tips and even links to past lists of similarly demented “thinspiration.”

There is also an online community called prettythin.com that offers albums of “thinspiration” photos.

One collection of photos is called “My gross fatness, please critisize (sic).” Looking through the album, I was shocked to find girls half my size referring to their bodies as “disgusting.”

Kalyn Coppedge, Sacramento State’s assistant health educator, has extensive knowledge about eating disorders, having worked with ED sufferers in the past.

“It becomes an obsession, so I can understand why these sites exist, but they’re very detrimental to young people and especially those who are trying to recover (from eating disorders),” she said.

Distorted body image is a devastating concept already plaguing women. The pro-ana movement takes this to whole new level.

“It makes sense that there are those websites. When you have an eating disorder, there’s that temptation to immerse yourself in it completely,” Coppedge said.

One “thinspirational” quote sums up the mentality that these afflicted individuals uphold.

As quoted on Ana Regzig’s blog, “Anorexia is not a disease. Anorexia is not a game. Anorexia is a skill, perfected only by a few. The chosen, the pure, the flawless.”

I must have missed the memo on “flawless” being redefined as “bones pushing through your skin”.

The fact that people would encourage such a damaging and ultimately fatal lifestyle is devastating.

My staff photograph alone makes it pretty obvious that I am no stranger to food. I would not call myself healthy, nor am I any closer to “flawless” than anorexic people are.

But imperfections are not manifest in the numbers on a scale, nor does a smaller number make anyone a better person than another.

Life should not be measured in pounds.

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